Pilot plant

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In industry and in plant engineering, a pilot plant is a test plant for the development of production plants. Upstream of the pilot plant is usually a laboratory-scale test arrangement in which the feasibility of the project is first checked. With the information received from the laboratory, a pilot plant is set up before the actual plant construction.

scale

Pilot plants represent an intermediate size between a mini-plant and a production plant. While in mini-plants material quantities of around 1 kg / h are processed, the quantities handled in pilot plants are 10 to 100 kg / h.

Advantages and disadvantages

The advantage of developing the process with a pilot plant is the low scale-up factor , which is associated with a lower risk when the process is scaled up (so-called upscaling). Disadvantages are the higher costs compared to the mini-plant technology, as well as the lower flexibility in the implementation of necessary changes that arise in the course of the process development.